Hot Club de Paris - ...The High School Suicide Cluster Band EP
Songs full of life, lyrics that are meant to be shouted with conviction, guitars crashing all the while.
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EPs seems to be all the rage these days; all sorts of bands from Keane to We Were Promised Jetpacks are releasing them. But if the EP format was custom made for any band, it would be those poppish punks from the Northwest, Hot Club de Paris. Earlier this year the band released an EP, 'With Days Like This as Cheap as Chewing Gum, Why Would Anyone Want to Work?', six tracks put together that represented their punk roots and DIY music approach well. Like its predecessor, 'The Rise and Inevitable Fall of the High School Suicide Cluster Band' is another six song collection featuring singer Paul Rafferty's frank and often humourous lyrics (check out the titles, long but amusing and with purpose), Hot Club's always fun, free-wheeling guitars and militant drums.
'I'm Not in Love and Neither Are You' is the gem of the bunch, delivering a love song (or is it?) in the Hot Club de Paris unconventional way. Also excellent is the title track: its name might be a mouthful, but it's an enjoyable '60s-esque affair, with the aforementioned melodic guitars and drums that come roaring in, like the motorcycles at the beginning of the classic film 'Grease'. Despite the name, 'Biggie Smalls and the Ghetto Slams' is not a hip hop song at all, but instead oddly features a melody that sounds like more appropriate for a nursery rhyme. Interesting story being told nonetheless. 'Free the Pterodactyl 3', the lead single from the EP, feels muzzled, like it could be so much more but someone is holding fast to the reins, keeping it in line with cloying choruses.
The last two tracks, 'The White Town Express (Get High, Stay Low)' and 'Three Albums In and Still No Ballad', may make you double-check the album sleeve for the artist name. The soft beginnings allow the band's Beatles-y harmonies to shine front and center above the graceful guitars. But they eventually change course and redirect into what become the trademark Hot Club de Paris sound, Rafferty's voice dripping in conviction rising above it all, reminding you exactly what band you're listening to and why you are listening.
Songs full of life, lyrics that are meant to be shouted with conviction, guitars crashing all the while. That's why you listen to Hot Club de Paris. And while this set of songs might not be make you dance around and clap your hands vigourously like those on 'With Days Like These...', it is apparent from this Liverpool band's previous works that they have the ability to write good songs, and this uneven effort is not representative of their talent.
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